


Bridget

by eudaimon



Series: Our Lives Apart [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 20:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The first woman hanged for witchcraft in Salem, MA.  Her name is carved on a bench at the memorial there.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Bridget

**Author's Note:**

> The first woman hanged for witchcraft in Salem, MA. Her name is carved on a bench at the memorial there.

 In the Fall, the leaves in the cemetery change and some idiot's usually been by with roses again, stems carefully de-thorned, wrapped in lengths of crêpey black ribbon which blows in the breeze. They are, she thinks, a thoughtless extravagance. Some days, she thinks that she likes that about them best, these modern days.

 

And Fall is a moving season.

 

She looks at the carved stone benches, the wet leaves, reddish and gold, and she thinks about these things and who knows what the other-she thinks. They have never pretended to understand each other. They come from the same house in different places. The other-she wears a red bodice and she smokes a pipe, though the smoke is odourless and colourless here, in this place. The wind takes it.She sits with her knees wide spread on the wet stone bench, her ruddy skirt kilted between her thighs, her boots muddied, though God knows where the mud comes from because they never leave the bench. Someone carved their name there (their shared name), and kept them. They stay, remembered. Memorialised.

 

_Bridget Bishop. Hanged June 10, 1692._

 

And that's the truth of it, and there is no justice in the world but the justice belonging to God.

 

They sit together on that bench, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, a carefully black wrapped stem across their knees, the both of her. The two of them, and the children come running and laughing along the road. The children, young women, tall and graceful in unfamiliar clothes, are old enough to run homes and bear children, bear husbands, but still they run, laughing, with the wind pulling at their unbound hair.

 

And they are both jealous but they recognise that times do change, and that this is a moving season.

 

*

To begin with, she was Bridget Wasslbee and she was not the best wife, but she tried. There was gagging in the marketplace and whipping, and all because she raised her voice. You shouldn't raise your voice. Never argue with a husband, even when you are the one who’s right.

 

Those girls, those running girls, they shout and laugh, utterly unfraid.

 

_I am no witch. I am innocent. I know nothing of it._

 

As if it mattered what she knew and didn't know. Women fall and are taken into history and sometimes they hang you from a broad branch so that, centuries later, the leaves will still die at the proper time, and the world will go on turning.

 

“They made you up,” she says, when she's feeling old and vicious and unloved. “They made you up because a good story is better than a bad one.”

The other shrugs, her linen stained above her red bodice, her pipe leaning between her fingers. Their shoulders brush and the rose falls to the floor and maybe someone will pick it up and maybe the wind will take it. There will be other roses.

 

“Better made up than forgotten.”

 

Too, too cruel. Too cruel by far.

These are the things which they do to each other. These are things which she does to herself.

 

Red bodice and brown, they sit beside each other on the bench. Once, up on the hill, there was an oak tree, and they hanged her there alone, charged with being a witch. They hanged her there alone, and both of them died. June 10th, 1692. Even if that wasn't carved beneath her backside, she'd remember it.

 

And that's the truth of it, and there is no justice in the world, not at all.

 


End file.
